1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid consumption device and a liquid residual determination method.
2. Related Art
An ink cartridge which is a liquid container which is able to be removed is typically mounted in an ink jet printing device which is an example of a liquid consumption device. In order to detect that ink which is a liquid in the liquid container has fallen below a predetermined amount, for example, an optical sensor which is provided with a light emitting element and a light receiving element is provided in the vicinity of an ink chamber, light is incident with regard to a bottom surface of a prism (a surface which opposes the apex of the prism) which is provided in the ink cartridge, the intensity of light, which is reflected from the prism which changes according to the presence or absence of ink at the reflecting surface of the prism, is detected, and thus, there is a method (referred to below as a sensor method) where the presence or absence of ink at the reflecting surface of the prism is found. In addition, the ink consumption amount is estimated (referred to below as a dot counting method) by counting the number of discharges of ink droplets from a printing head and multiplying the ink amount per single discharge which is set in advance and the number of discharges. Furthermore, there is a technique (for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2003-39694 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2003-39695) where the sensor method and the dot counting method are used together and the ink consumption amount which is calculated using the dot counting method is corrected according to the ink consumption amount which is detected using the sensor method
However, in the technique which is described in the above described publications, there is a concern that it is not possible to detect when the ink is less than the predetermined amount with high accuracy as a result of it not being possible to correct the ink consumption amount which is calculated using the dot counting method in a case where a defect has occurred in the sensor. Such a problem is a problem which occurs in a similar manner in a case where a method where other various types of sensors are used and the dot counting method are used together without being limited to the sensor method where a prism is used.